The Mumpsimus

One day I happened to overhear a student talking about Star Wars novels, and I told him that Del Rey Books has sent me some over the years, and that usually I donate them to libraries, since I rarely read series fiction or media tie-in novels (rarely, but not never ; heck, I used Jeff VanderMeer's Predator novel in a class once). I asked him if he'd like the ones that were currently sitting in a pile somewhere in my house, and he said sure. I had recently done a big library donation, so didn't have much more than a few advanced copies, but I brought them in anyway. When I gave them to him, at first I thought he was disappointed that they were ARCs without finished artwork, but it turned out his silence and immobility were the behaviors of a die-hard fan in bliss, as I had given him a novel that was hugely anticipated and not due to be released for at least another month. It was then that I hit upon an idea: Here was a thoughtful, articulate, well-read student who wa...

Knowing Rick Bowes is a privilege for many reasons, but one of my favorites is that he is a wonderful historian of New York City. Walking the streets with Rick becomes a magical tour through the wondrous and terrible changes the city has seen over the centuries. Having lived in Manhattan for most of his life, Rick has also sometimes been an eyewitness to history, including the history made in the early hours of June 28, 1969 in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Riots . Richard Bowes is the author of such books as Minions of the Moon , From the Files of the Time Rangers , and Streetcar Dreams . He has won the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Million Writers Award, and been nominated for the Nebula Award. He reportedly likes writing but hates being a writer . Update (2024): Rick died in December 2023. These remembrances at  Uncanny Magazine , including my own, explore some of the effect he had on so many of us.   If you...

Sue Lange and I struck up a correspondence recently, and at one point she mentioned a slight obsession with the idea of the singularity. "Really?" I said. "Tell me more..." Sue is the author of We, Robots , part of the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces Series. When Matthew suggested I blog at the Mumpsimus on the subject of the Singularity or any other weirdity, I opted for weirdity. I needed a change. The Singularity is threatening to swallow me whole these days. Too often I feel trapped in it. I know the Mumpsimus readers are an eclectic bunch. They are not all science fiction fans. For those who have no idea what the Singularity is, I invite you to take a quick primer via an excerpt from my book, We, Robots and meet me back here. Everyone make it back? Great. Moving forward. The problem with not writing about the Singularity is that anything I do these days: orcharding, horse back riding, applescript writing, pie throwing, etc., seems to relate to it someho...

Occasional Mumpsimus guest blogger Craig Gidney has a collection of stories coming out in November, and his publisher, Steve Berman, is making a truly generous special offer . Craig's struggling to get some necessary, expensive prescriptions at a time when he doesn't have health insurance, and to help him out, Steve is willing to send all the money from pre-publication orders for the book to Craig. See Steve's post for more information. Craig's situation isn't the least bit unique. The American health insurance system is an atrocity. My father died with a great load of debt to hospitals, and his struggles over the past decade with insurance companies and medical providers were extensive. Myself, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get sick in the next few weeks, because I won't have insurance again until October. But I'm lucky -- healthy, single, no need for maternity care, without much of a history of health problems, and able (for n...

Dzanc Books is publishing Best of the Web 2008 , and because 1.) I think it's a great idea for a book and 2.) there are few things I wouldn't do for Dan Wickett and his Emerging Writers Network , I agreed to host one of the writers included in the anthology as a guest blogger here. (Other websites are doing the same thing , and I will post a link if Dan or anybody else creates a post with links out to them all -- and here's a collection of links to the others .) The guest blogger here at The Mumpsimus is Myfanwy Collins , whose "The Daughters" is included in the book. Dan selected The Mumpsimus as the place that Myfanwy would visit because we are both New Hampshire writers, a distinction that truly makes us members of an elite. (" Elite ? Oh, so that's what you're calling it these days, Cheney..." Dear readers, please allow me my delusions.) The items below were, I believe, intended to be separate blog posts, but I'm not going to have...

a review by Dustin Kurtz Nova Swing's conceit is essentially the same as the conceit of M . John Harrison’s previous book, Light . Somewhere out in the hinterlands of human-inhabited space there is a stretch of bad physics, a mean glowing strip of strange, light years long, known as the Kefahuchi Tract. In Light the Tract is a wild plaything for entradistas -- thrill-seeking celebrity pilots whose exploits seem to make up the substance of much of that galactic arm’s rumor. In an example of the casual but powerful analogy at which Harrison excels, the galactic neighborhood near the Tract is often called the Beach. The Tract is also puzzlingly related to an invisible, though hungry, earthly horror and his serial killer scion. And, just to spice things up, the Tract is somehow involved with ancient alien relics, the appropriation of which forms the goal of much of that book’s plot. If you haven’t read Light and are confused, don’t worry. I have read it, and those muddled se...

a review by Craig Laurance Gidney Like a patchwork quilt, Nalo Hopkinson’s new novel The New Moon's Arms positively seethes with patterns and threads that clash, but come together regardless. It’s a madcap comic novel about aging, the wounds of slavery, and the transformative power of love set on an imaginary archipelago in the Caribbean. The action centers around Calamity Lambkin, a curmudgeonly 50-something woman on the verge of menopause. Her first person narration is raunchy and rollicking without resorting to the cheap sassiness that Hollywood assigns black women. You won’t find Calamity in a Tyler Perry movie anytime soon. Born Chastity, she has renamed herself Calamity after a life of hardship, involving a teenaged pregnancy, single motherhood and the disappearance of her own mother. During her father’s funeral, she starts experiencing intense hot flashes that coincide with her finding objects that have been lost long ago—mostly from her childhood. A monogrammed pin...

a guest review by Craig L. Gidney Angels, fallen and otherwise, are making a bit of a resurrection in fiction. One can look to such treatments of the angelic mythos as Storm Constantine’s Grigori trilogy, which imagines the Nephelim as sexy outsiders, or The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox, where the fallen angel was a melancholic muse to the eponymous vintner. Fallen angels are a way to explore the mystical and mythic underpinnings of religion. The angels in these books are not evil in the traditional, villainous sense. Rather, they are tragic iconoclasts who challenge the heavenly status quo. Cameron Rogers’ novel The Music of Razors adds to the new wave angelic canon that includes Hal Duncan , Philip Pullman , as well as Knox and Constantine. The Music of Razors is a contemporary gothic fantasy with historic and mythological back stories. The brief prologue sets the stage. A fallen angel murders another angel, then creates magical instruments with its ...

a review by Craig L. Gidney With the recent battles surrounding evolution, and the insidious influence of the religious right on public policy, Azhar Abidi’s debut novel, Passarola Rising is a timely (and timeless) fable. It is a philosophical romance, a distant cousin of Voltaire’s and Calvino’s work with a whimsical nod to St. Exupery. Like Voltaire—who appears in the novel—Abidi critiques the forces of organized religion and anti-intellectualism through fantasy and satire. Like Calvino and St. Exupery, Abidi has created a tall tale about flight that’s porous and full of air. The philosophy (and the physics) are decidedly featherweight, but it is an immensely enjoyable read. Abidi takes the seeds of a true story, and embellishes it with a Baron Munchausen-like glee. In the sixteenth century, Brazilian-born priest Bartolomeu Lourenco moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he began to work on a flying machine, called the Passarola , which means "large bird" in...

a guest review by Craig Laurance Gidney It was less like building a house than like colonizing an island, this freakish, lovely and marvelous atoll that rose from gray wasteland of St. Brendan’s High School like some extravagant Atlantis we’d willed into being. All of our previous alliances and identities were tossed aside—jock, freak, egghead, cheerlead and anonymous. (pg. 76) Back in the early 80s, when I was fourteen, I was in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest . While I did not get the part I wanted (Ariel), I remember the days leading up to the 3 day engagement as halcyon. The time spent preparing for the play is one of those perfect bubbles of euphoria that we all strive to recreate. That brief moment in time was key to crystallization of my identity. Joining a stage production is like entering a rarified world, where everyone agrees to create an alternate reality out of a spellbook -- a script. (And Shakespeare is surely the greatest of those enchant...

I asked fellow Kwani? LitFest/SLS 2006 participant Beverley Nambozo for some thoughts on the experience, and she provided the following... Nairobi. The performance poetry class began like a secondary school literature lesson. Thankfully, it escalated to a mature discourse. The students did not get the opportunity to perform before others but it was a good learning ground. There was genuine enthusiasm in the class and some students also had a chance to visit other workshops. With more training material and a stronger communication network, much more work can be covered for next year. The Heron Hotel: Stiff necked writers, editors and librarians concealing their huge breakfasts with manuscripts, note pads and journals. Hmph! Timid students milling around the Tin House editor, Farafina Magazine editor, Sable litmag editor and Kwani? editor wondering if their works had hopes of existing off their worn out looking manuscripts into the above mentioned finer established magazines. An ord...

I'm getting packed up and ready to head to Kenya for a couple weeks, and while I'm gone I will try to post an occasional update, but I also thought it would be fun to try something I've never tried around here -- a guest blogger. And it only makes sense that while I'm in Kenya the first Mumpsimus guest blogger should be Njihia Mbitiru, who is in the same masters degree program as I am in at Dartmouth, is a Clarion Workshop graduate, and is originally from Kenya. In fact, my participation in SLS Kenya owes a lot to him, because he stopped me one day at the Dartmouth library and said he'd just read an amazing Kenyan story -- "Ships in High Transit" by Binyavanga Wainaina. That put Wainaina's name into my head, I read up on his literary organization Kwani , and started paying more attention to Kenyan writers. When I chanced upon a reference to SLS Kenya somewhere, I was intrigued, and when I saw Wainaina was involved, I decided to apply. So please ...